Trauma
What is Trauma
Trauma is the psychosomatic reaction of an individual to a terrifying experience that can occur at any time in a person’s life.
In response to war veterans and the debilitating psychosomatic symptoms that plagued them for years after their discharge, in 1980 the American Psychiatric Association included harmful traumatic reactions in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, under the umbrella of a diagnosis that we now know as Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
The groundbreaking CDC-Kaiser Permanente Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) Study
The CDC-Kaiser Permanente Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) Study, conducted in 1995 in the United States, was a groundbreaking study that changed our understanding of trauma, the types of trauma, and its devastating consequences. This study investigated the impact of childhood abuse, neglect, and family dysfunction on future physical and mental health problems in more than 17,000 adults.
The results of the study were critical in understanding the magnitude of the devastating consequences of childhood trauma throughout an individual’s adult life.
From this study, we learned more not only about the psychological effects of adverse childhood experiences on the young brain, but also about the long-term health complications that can result from repeated exposure to traumatic experiences.
The results showed a strong link between adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and future behaviors such as violence, addiction, as well as devastating physical consequences, such as declining health, chronic diseases, and even low life expectancy.
This research, combined with recent developments in Neuroscience, has greatly deepened our understanding of Trauma and its different types, a development that led to the separation of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) from what we now call Composite Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (C-PTSD).
What is COMPLEX TRAUMA (C-PTSD)?
Complex Trauma, or Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, is the multi-layered NEUROLOGICAL TRAUMATIC RESPONSE of our body to SHORT-TERM EXPOSURE to excessive stress caused by REPEATED SOCIAL AND INTERPERSONAL TRAUMATIC CHILDHOOD EXPERIENCES. These experiences result from events that shock a child to the point that their nervous system is overwhelmed, resulting in them being unable to respond to natural, developmental needs. This disruption is often severe enough to cause long-term changes in their brain structure. Adverse childhood experiences that can lead to complex trauma include: neglect, prenatal trauma, physical, sexual or emotional abuse.
Abusive experiences are frozen in time at the time the trauma was experienced and during later adult life they make the person shocked, helpless, isolated and immobilized on a physical, social, professional and interpersonal level.
Neuroscientific research shows that when we have experienced repetitive traumatic events, our brain undergoes detrimental changes in its structure, resulting in the following functions being compromised: Self-awareness, Executive Function, Emotional Regulation, Rational, Conceptual and Linguistic Processing.
Traumatic memories of the past are imprinted in primitive areas of the brain while the neocortex, the control tower of the brain, goes “out of order”. Then the instinctive parts of our brain are activated: The Limbic System which is the seat of emotions, together with the Brain Stem which regulates our vital functions. There are the ancient ways of dealing with danger, which are Flight, Freeze, Fight and Submission. When these areas remain constantly activated without the help of the evolved neocortex, our system loses its balance. When we are in this state, our awake inner world resembles a theater where the alarm system is constantly activated at every insignificant occasion, warning us of a danger that does not exist. Our body is driven into chronic overstimulation. As a result, people with complex trauma do not feel safe. At the core of their existence there is a deep lack of trust in the world. They see the environment as constantly threatening. This distorted sense affects the internal image and understanding of the self, as well as the meaning we give to external stimuli, without having the ability to separate our experience in the present from the past traumatic experience, since the sensations of traumatic memory are subconsciously repeated over and over again through the sensitized nervous system.
Trauma is not a painful story that we tell about something that happened in the past. It is the current imprint of this past pain, horror and fear that lives within people, experienced in the here and now as if it were then.
Consequently, the person is often overwhelmed by feelings of incomprehensible and overwhelming terror, anger, overwhelming shame and deep sadness. Feelings that are usually not communicated, because there is a fear of social stigma. A fact that renders the person alone and helpless, in endless, unmanageable pain.
Trauma Therapy
To heal traumatic symptoms, the balance of the physical, emotional and mental functioning of the individual must be restored. The goal is threefold: on the one hand, to achieve recognition and understanding of either uncontrolled emotion or rigid logic, self-observation and compassionate understanding of the self, and finally psychological well-being, including a sense of balance between emotion, thoughts, actions and interpersonal relationships.
Through trauma therapy, we can find new, functional ways to protect ourselves, while at the same time realizing the amazing ability of our brain and body to heal and lead us to mental strength and well-being.
Recent neuroscientific research data warn that information, prevention and effective treatment of the symptoms of Complex Trauma is an immediate health issue and an urgent social need. The great message of hope that science gives us is that there are now ways to heal our brain, soul and body. We are not alone with the unbearable pain of the past nightmare that we experienced. We are all together in the effort to heal, because it concerns us all.
In Greece, intergenerational trauma afflicts our family systems from generation to generation. The generations of parents who raised us either experienced horrible years of occupation, war and poverty or followed immediately after as a post-war generation with all the fear, horror, animalistic mental defenses and the primal need for survival that was transferred to them behaviorally and genetically from their own parents. Due to the intergenerational trauma that we are now able to know is ALSO transmitted genetically (see Epigenetics) and that goes back to 1200, strange as it may sound, our country is suffering from collective post-traumatic stress and the sooner we understand it, the better for our country and for our families.
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